


gadget, trinket, doodad, device

by scioscribe



Category: James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Flirting, Humor, M/M, Technology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-13
Updated: 2012-11-13
Packaged: 2017-11-18 14:47:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Bond wants a shoehorn that can also pick locks, it's Q's job to give it to him.  (Well, actually it's not, but for some reason he keeps getting talked into it anyway.  Also, he's been making a genuinely excessive number of things that explode.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	gadget, trinket, doodad, device

Q had originally attracted the attention of the British government at sixteen, when he had hacked the prime minister’s system and used the account to pirate American television episodes. He’d done it only because he’d been hacking into their system routinely since he’d been about eleven, and he was getting a bit irritated that they never realized it. _Honestly_. Did he really want to live in a country with such pitifully secured networks?

“You,” he said, and if Bond thought he was spotty at twenty-eight, he should have seen him at sixteen, when his complexion had been an utter disaster, “need me,” and M had agreed.

MI6 paid his way through university (they weren’t fond of his tendency to show up only for the exams if the class was worthless, which half of them were). Then they’d moved him about the globe, and he’d learned Russian and Chinese, or at least enough in both to order tea and then complain about it, and everywhere he went, people had listened to what he told them and considered him important.

Then he came to London—to complain about the tea in his native tongue—and got made James Bond’s quartermaster, which he knew within twenty minutes would be dreadful and probably give him some sort of nervous condition besides, because Bond listened to only one in every dozen things Q told him, and considered him important in the same way Bond considered knives important (sharp and likely to help him kill people).

Furthermore, Bond kept being charming at the most inopportune moments, exactly when Q was intending to take some sort of firm line on refusing to make him some sort of ludicrous special device.

Which is why he found himself in one of the tech labs at three in the morning—Q disrespected clocks, as a rule—toying with parts.

Eve, who kept M’s hours, which was to say that she was there almost constantly and appeared to live on coffee, catnaps, and takeout curries, watched him for a few minutes while scrolling through her email (Q kept trying to improve her filters, but there were always more people who wanted to talk to Eve than she could reasonably answer), and finally said, “I give up. What is it?”

“So far, a disaster. I’m not as good with metalwork.”

“What’s it _intended_ to be?”

“A sophisticated iteration of a simple concept, designed to slip past casual checks. In short, if Bond wants a shoehorn that can also pick and/or reprogram locks, it’s my job to give it to him.”

“It’s not, actually,” she said.

“No, it’s not, but yet, here I am. You really have to wonder who uses a shoehorn these days, anyway.” He made a tentative readjustment and eyed the results. Not promising. “I suppose it’s his business if he wants people to assume he’s old-fashioned instead of, well, prone to breaking into or out of places. I’m lucky he hasn’t asked me to make it explode. He’s very partial to things that explode.”

“I’m sensing a _marked_ partiality,” Eve said. “And it isn’t his.”

“Fancying Bond is something I don’t even remotely have the time for.”

“I understand perfectly. You’re making him a lock-picking shoehorn at three in the morning because your feelings about him are neutral, as though for a potted plant.”

“Actually, I’m rather fond of potted plants. Creates a natural energy. Does this look like a shoehorn at all? It does pick locks, but I think it might look like it.”

“Perhaps a postapocalyptic shoehorn.”

“Useful in the event of a zombie invasion. You’re here as well, you know.”

“It’s my job to be here,” she said. “It’s not your job to make every gadget, trinket, doodad, and device that crosses Bond’s mind, or yours, for that matter. In fact, at this exact moment, it is my _job_ to tell you that M’s a bit cross that you keep listing them as line-items when they’re of very questionable use. Not to mention very clearly Bond’s idea, with the exception of the iPod body-sensor, which was certainly yours.”

“How’d you know?”

“I worked with Bond, I don’t think he’s ever owned an iPod in his life. Stop making him things he doesn’t need.”

“I can finish the shoehorn, though,” Q said, in what he felt was a reasonable and not at all petulant voice. “Since I’m well in now.”

“The non-exploding shoehorn of repression,” Eve said musingly. “Maybe you could make a device that, like the Wizard, would give you some courage.”

“I have courage. You ought to have seen me taking that spider out of the tub the other day.”

“He likes you, you know,” she said. “He said so.” 

“I know what you’re talking about, and what he actually said was, ‘You’re more interesting than most people,’ which is not the same thing, and anyway, it’s irrelevant, because I don’t fancy him, because I don’t fancy people who don’t own iPods and who interrogate me as to the usefulness of my job, thank you very much, and I can still make him things if I use my own money for it.”

Eve said, “I’m going to write this down on a note so you don’t lose it,” and wrote, in large capital letters: _YOU ARE RIDICULOUS_ on a Post-It. She stuck it to his forehead before leaving.

“I liked you better as a field agent!” he called after her.

It was around eight in the morning that he unveiled the shoehorn to Bond, who examined it and said, “It picks locks?”

“And helps you put on shoes. That _is_ what shoehorns are supposed to do, aren’t they? Not working in footwear and not being well into my seventies, I wasn’t certain, but yes, both.” He slid another box across the table. “I had extra time, so I made you this, but under no circumstances are you to tell M or Eve, because apparently I’m to stop using departmental funds to make you things that look like ordinary things until they explode. Whereupon they look like shrapnel. So this is the last.”

“It’s a condom,” Bond said.

“Which is appropriate, because it’s for _protection_.”

“You thought it would be a good idea to give me a condom that explodes?”

“Oh, right. Your habit of sleeping with people on your missions. That hadn’t crossed my mind.” He glanced down at Eve’s Post-It note and felt part of his mind—a very obnoxiously smug part—agreeing with it. The Freudian nature of it all—well, doubtless he’d understand that better if he had gone to more of his psychology classes than the exams. “You’ll have to be careful, I suppose. Anyway, like I said, it’s the last of the exploding objects trend, since I’ve had three separate emails _and_ a Moneypenny visit to the effect of ‘stop catering to Bond’s nostalgia.’”

“Is _that_ what you’ve been doing?”

“No,” Q said, as deadpan as he could manage. “I was looking forward to a whole series of mundane explosives. Ones that look cheese. Cats. Ties. Money-clips. Eventually, I intended to create a version of _you_ that explodes, only the technology isn’t quite there yet.”

“Not everything has to explode,” Bond said. He was still looking at the condom. “Some things simmer. And everything you make has its uses.”

Q’s mouth went a little dry. “Does it?”

“Exploding prophylactics aside. The glasses with the thermal imaging saved my life.”

“I do like making things that save your life,” Q said. He just hadn’t known Bond thought about them that way. He _did_ always bring them back broken, or wobbling to the left (always the left, for some reason), but fieldwork was tricky—the circumstances weren’t controlled, after all. He glanced again at the _YOU ARE RIDICULOUS_ note and said, “Could you put the exploding condom down, maybe?”

Bond did, lips quirked in what would have been a smile if it hadn’t been _James Bond_ doing it, because Q had never seen Bond smile, and if Bond were going to smile, it wouldn’t be at him, probably, except for how he made useful things that kept Bond alive, and non-useful things that nevertheless blew up in charming if vaguely unpredictable ways.

“I’m not old, you know,” Bond said, a little abruptly to Q’s mind. “Shoehorns can be practical.”

“I’m sure.”

“The iPod was practical. For music, in addition to the body-sensing element.”

“I also put Pong on there,” Q said.

Bond held up the shoehorn. “This doesn’t explode?”

“Sorry.” Q could think very, very quickly under certain circumstances, although he could not usually think very quickly and very usefully at the same time, so his rapid internal monologue then was something along the lines of: _Does he think I think he’s old, I don’t think he’s old, look at him, he thinks I’m young, is this about the bit with the painting, because I was just trying to be impressive, but he only said the thing about the spots after I said the part about the ship, oh, he liked the iPod, I wonder if he found the playlist?_

“It just—lets you get into things,” he said, trying to recover himself. “And helps you with shoes. In some fashion.”

“I could show you,” Bond said, and without waiting for Q to catch up with him, he got down on one knee and drew Q’s foot towards him. His hands were warm and steady—firm hands into which Q had given everything already, now that he thought about it. He’d given Bond the work of his mind and hours, to give Bond whatever he wanted, whatever would keep him safe, whatever would be a confession of sorts for what he hadn’t wanted to admit. He’d been making Bond Valentines, pressing them into his hands, and now Bond’s hands were on his calf and his ankle.

“I am having,” Q said, “a series of epiphanies.”

Bond’s smile—and it _was_ a smile—deepened. “I don’t ask just anyone to make me things that explode,” he said, and he began to unknot Q’s laces. He slipped his finger underneath them, and then underneath the tongue, and loosened them. Right shoe. He slid it off, Q’s toes momentarily cool even through the socks, and him wondering a bit about the smell—he hadn’t been home in a while—but Bond just took up the shoe again, and the shoehorn, and put the slim end of it against Q’s heel. “It opens it up,” he said.

“Goes well with the lock-picking part, then.”

“Quite.” Bond began to lower Q’s foot back into his shoe. It was an easy glide in.

“I should warn you that I may be developing a fetish. Though possibly that’s just you.”

“Well,” Bond said, his mouth still close to Q’s foot, “I don’t actually like exploding pens as much as I like getting you to make them for me.”

He would make Bond a thousand exploding pens and put them in an exploding pen-case and Bond could use them to write on exploding paper, for all Q cared about it at that particular moment. He said, “I like making you things,” and he couldn’t control the odd thing his voice was doing or the way he couldn’t stop smiling, so to shut himself up, and to make sure he didn’t look like the class picture of himself with what was practically a _moue_ , for fuck’s sake, he dragged Bond up—or himself down, he wasn’t precisely sure which—and kissed him.

He was bloody sick of simmering, anyway, and Bond had taught him the value of explosions.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Gadget, Trinket, Doodad, Device](https://archiveofourown.org/works/866930) by [lynxzpanther](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynxzpanther/pseuds/lynxzpanther)




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